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Obama Needs Luck To Win In 2012

www.huffingtonpost.com12/26/11

MattMackowiak MUST READ: Smart @GlennThrush piece on the nine numbers Obama will watch in 2012 — http://t.co/gjerVGAz #tcot #RS #2012tweets #GOP · 18 hours ago from web ….. will have a hard time because this will be a referendum on him not the GOP candidate. People will be voting AGAINST Obama not FOR the GOP oh and Independents decide elections and within that group that voted for him (like myself) Obama's approval is 35% Then there is this …

9 numbers Obama will watch in 2012 – Glenn Thrush – POLITICO.com

www.politico.com12/25/11

Obama has only one metric to watch, which is a distillation of all the things mentioned in the article: his approval among Independents. In a polarized election like 2012 Dems will vote Dem and Rep will vote Rep. …

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And When He Lost The Independents, He Lost The War!

The Crux Of The Problem

Obama’s democrats took control of the House and the Senate with substantial margins, but America is center right.
For twenty months Democrats had the power to do almost anything they wanted.
They controlled every lever of elective power in Washington but sadly for them they didn’t and don’t control the public’s allegiance.

So How Did The Democrats Lose The War?

The Democrats’ demise is actually simple to explain, they lost the support of the independents.

In 1994 the Republicans got the backing of 14% of independents.
In 2006 the Democrats got the backing of 18%.
But in the latest Gallup survey, Republicans lead among independents by 11%.

You Can’t Win If Only One In Five People Want You!

Since 1984 both the Republicans and the Democrats have had hovered around the mid-30s to 40s in terms of their proportion of the public, whilst Independents have been around the mid 20s.

The GOP’s share declined from 40% in 2002 to 33% in 2008, and independents hovered between 22 and 28%.
So whoever gets those independents wins and reflect the basic center-right contour of American opinion.

The Liberals Need The Center Even More

Since 1992, according to Gallup, ideological opinion has been roughly constant:

Self-described moderates have been right around 40%
Conservatives were always in the high 30s
Liberals were in the high teens to low 20s.

So it should be clear to almost everybody that to try to govern on the strength of only one in five people would be rank foolishness, but Obama and his Czars didn’t seem to grasp this obvious fact for whatever reason.

The Liberal Response

Not having grasped the seemingly obvious, Obama’s advisers and the left wing press are now exhorting him to get even more angry, insistent, and ambitiously liberal.
To be fair to Obama though, I sense that he knows that going further left would be suicide even if the Liberal lemmings would happily jump off of the cliff.

It’s The Public That’s Got It Wrong!

What is almost incomprehensible is that Liberals not only don’t seem to recognize that the country as a whole is seeking a different reality, but they see the majority as just plain wrong on immigration enforcement and the Ground Zero mosque, and they they continue to accuse the American public of bigotry even after it elected an African-American president.

Former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner wrote, “Liberals are expressing deepening alienation from our nation and turning on the American people with a vengeance”.

The Bottom Line

Liberals thought that they thought they had a mandate that was made in heaven in 2008 and they seemingly can’t bear the thought that they deluded themselves and the they’ve gone from triumphalism to a petulant and uncomprehending tantrum in less than two years.

 

“The Bank Bailouts Have Created More Risk in The System”.

Neil Barofsky, who is the special inspector general for  TARP (The Troubled Asset Relief Program)  states quite clearly in a quarterly report that was released to Congress last Sunday, January 31, 2010 that the problems that led to the last financial crisis have not yet been addressed, and in some cases have actually grown worse.
“Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car”.

And referring to the “Too big to fail approach” he added, “The government’s bailout of financial institutions deemed “too big to fail” has created a risk that the United States could face a worse fiscal meltdown in the future, and the $700 billion financial bailout has encouraged more risk-taking because bank executives, who are still receiving massive bonuses, figure the government will come to the rescue the next time they steer their ships nearly aground”.

The report warns that these supports mean the government has done more than simply support the mortgage market, and in many ways has become the mortgage market, with the taxpayer shouldering the risk that had once been borne by the private investor.

“The government has stepped in where the private players have gone away and if we take government resources and replace that market without addressing the serious underlying concerns, there really is a risk of artificially pushing up home prices in the coming years”.

The report also revealed that, while the Obama administration pledged to spend $75 billion to prevent foreclosures, that only a tiny fraction of it amounting to just over $15 million has been spent so far and figures indicate that under the Making Home Affordable program, only about 66,500 borrowers, or only 7% of those who signed up had completed the process as of December.

And it might be worth noting that even though there are growing calls for another stimulus bill, in spite of the fact that only 30% of the first $700 billion has so far made its way into the system and the real jobless rate is now at 17.5% if the jobless that have given up looking for work are included.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said, “The market mentality now seems fixed that the U.S. government will continue to step in and bail out giant financial institutions. The IG’s findings confirm my decision to oppose releasing $350 billion in TARP funds last year and my recent vote to terminate the program altogether”.

And Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who is the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee added, “The SIGTARP’s report is just another reminder of how Congress and the administration have ignored the role that politics and government played in causing the housing crisis and the economic collapse while pursuing other regulatory reforms will not fix the underlying problem”.

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